Hello Axiom Owners,

I have recently moved to a new home and want the best suggestion for placement of the QS8.

Assuming the ideal acoustic environment in a 5.1 setup.
1. Should the speakers be placed on the side walls per Dolby Digital specs?
2. Because the speakers are quadpolar should it be placed BEHIND the listening area on the back wall.

Any suggestion will help...thanks

To the side is still the recommended position for surrounds in a 5.1 setup, with the area behind the seating still being reserved for rear surrounds if you go to 7.1. Some people put the surrounds behind the seating area and are happy, but it's usually only suggested if there isn't a good place to mount the QS8s on the side.

CV is right. Sidewall for 5.1, sidewall and backwall for 7.1.

Do you have a good position on the side wall slightly behind the listening position? Some people have placed the QS surrounds to the rear when side positioning was difficult.

This is a good place to start and tweak it till YOU like the sound as each room and personal preference is different.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/setup/speaker-setup-guide/index.html

Side wall for 5.1 and slightly behind the seating area to give you a little rear sound affects, as you said using Dolby specs.

I have my QS4s a few feet behind the seating position on the side walls and they work great in this position.

Stan, you didn't provide a key measurement: how far behind the listening position is the back wall? In a 5.1 setup the side surround speakers should generally be placed on the side walls a little(maybe 2-3')farther back than directly to the side, to lend a little "phantom" back effect in the absence of 7.1 back speakers. If the back wall is close to the listening position(say not more than about 3')then putting the QSs on the back wall widely spread almost to the side walls is very little different from a side wall mounting almost at the back wall.

What about height in relation to main listening / viewing position? Is it best to place at ear level or above ear level (maybe 2 feet above)?

2-4 ft above ear level is usually good, taking into account the ceiling height(you don't want the top woofer firing against a low ceiling!)

Thanks. That would put my surrounds about 1 1/2 feet away from the ceiling. I'm guessing thats enough clearance for the top woofer.

Here's another question regarding surrounds, would you use QS8 for Front Height L/R for a Pro Logic IIz? or would you use an M22?

Does anyone use this format (Pro Logic IIz) and is there any truth to how good this sounds?

Since the derived height material is ambient and diffused in nature, speakers with very wide dispersion should be more appropriate. QS4s should be plenty for that application.

Going by Grunt's review I would suggest using QS8s or 4's.

My previous set up had my QS8's on the back wall. I didn't like the fact that my couch was up against this wall also. Now my new setup allows me to have my couch centered in the room with the back walls about 7 feet away. My sidewalls will be approx. 5 feet away on each side of the listening area. Placing my QS8's on the side walls will allow the speaker to be approx 4 feet back from my listening area. Thus the delimma of sidewall vs. backwall placement. I'm right in the middle of that transition zone. I will probabbly try the sidewalls in this setup with speaker height at approx. 7 feet. Seems that the sidewall will be more forgiving than the back walls. Thanks for your reply.

Sounds like an ideal setting for 7 channels with QS8 sides and QS8 or M2 rear channels.

This is a long read (sorry if you've seen this before) but this might help in regards to speaker placement. It just about covers everything about 5.1 mixing...I found it very interesting...

Directly from the recording sound engineers...
Producers and Engineers

Dana

Thanks for that document... very interesting indeed.

Is it just me or did this document go against everything that we just discussed and also what is recommended by Dolby itself.

This document recommends to position rear surround speaker behind the sweet spot at an angle between 110 and 150 and not at direct 90. The height recommendations is at ear level not any "x" feet above.

"Often, the rear speakers are positioned on the side of the listening area instead of behind it. If they are placed to the rear, they are often hidden behind furniture (thus producing a muffled sound) or mounted up on the wall behind the listening position, firing well above the listener's head. As a result, arrival times can vary so widely that there may be no "sweet spot" whatsoever where the listener can actually enjoy a correctly balanced blend of the speaker channels without phase smearing."

I guess it makes sense if the person recording follows these rules then it should follow in your HT or am I wrong in this assumption? or does this come down to there really are no clear rules / specifications and it's "what personally works best for you" kind of world?

I personally would follow the engineers advice...that's just me thou.

Dana

Sounds to me like that article is dealing more with multichannel music reproduction than for HT going by this statement:

"It is worth noting that the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) has recommended that the rear speakers be positioned more to the side of the listener, angled between 100° and 120°. (See section 1.) This recommendation, which was originally developed for television broadcast and not for music,
represents a compromise between envelopment, which is strongest at 90°, and rear phantom imaging, which improves as the rear speakers are moved further back and are angled in more steeply. Although this practice has been adopted by many surround professionals in the film and broadcast industries, it may not
be suitable for music applications where the rear speakers are used to carry vital musical information and not just ambience or effects. Speaker placement, therefore, need not be restricted to the ITU recommendation alone: at the engineer’s discretion, more extreme rear speaker anglings (at up to 150°) are acceptable, depending upon the program content being mixed."


It also states that in the home market speaker placements can be all over the place and this article is just for the use in the mixing of sound at the professional level to provide something of a standard. I also noted it is now a 6 yr old document. I wonder if anything has changed.

Hi,

There is a lot of wrong-headed information in this article. As Jakewash points out, the article deals largely with mixing for multi-channel music recordings.

I have attended Hollywood mixing theater sessions for surround-sound films (the Alfred Hitchcock mixing theater in L.A.) and the surround speakers comprise four speakers on each side wall with two or more on the rear wall.

Many of the names on the list of recording engineers on this document are well known music engineers, not mixing engineers for movie soundtracks. The document is quite dated ("the trend in surround speakers is toward direct-radiating. ."); in fact, the trend in surround speaker design is towards bipole or dipole designs or switchable models.

Originally, when SACD and DVD-Audio multi-channel music formats were introduced, music engineers were at odds with Dolby Labs and THX in suggested surround speaker placement. As the document indicates, they preferred direct-radiating surrounds placed much more to the rear so they would image a sweet spot in the center of the room. The problem with this arrangement is that if you moved your seat slightly rearward the imaging collapsed to the rear speakers. Plus this arrangement only provided a sweet spot position for one listener. Anyone else in the received a soundstage skewed to one side or the other, the front or the rear.

As multi-polar, dipole and bipole speakers were used for music playback arranged in the Dolby array, it became clear that a diffuse and enveloping "wash" of audio was preferred by most listeners.

I also attended several New York sessions hosted by some of the recording engineers named in the document. One of the more bizarre demos was of a multi-channel music recording that placed Neil Young in the rear channels, which was totally unrealistic and very peculiar.

By far the best illusion for home listening of movie soundtracks or multi-channel music is achieved with multi-polar surrounds placed in the Dolby configuration. With well-designed surrounds like the QS8s, ambient envelopment is achieved with no loss of imaging specificity for sounds hard-mixed to a specific side or rear locaton.

Regards,
Alan

Thanks, Alan.

Here is another source for speaker placement. This is a presentation from Floyd Toole, Ph.D. on speaker placements for multichannel audio.
http://www.infinitysystems.com/home/technology/whitepapers/inf-rooms_1.pdf
I found this to be a very interesting article.

-Dave

Thank you. I will take heed on your advice.

Looking at other speaker manufacturers who package home theater systems most include direct radiating speakers as opposed to multi / bipolar for surround speakers. It’s also confusing to note that almost all illustrations of surround speakers set ups (even Dolby) visually show direct radiating speakers. What a disservice that would be to anyone trying to set up their HT for the first time when the trend as you have stated is to have multi / bipolar surround speakers. If they only knew what they were missing.

This goes back to my initial question, does a recording engineer for HT / movie end users place surrounds at ear level or above when they work? I'd like to emulate this environment in my home to appreciate all the hard work put into my videos. Also interesting to note that Dolby illustrates at ear level and my Marantz manual shows above ear level with no clear indication of distance.

Thanks for the white paper davew. Picked up ideas for my HT room seating configuration.

I think they would be setting up at ear level to slightly above as per most published HT specs, but it really doesn't matter too much as whether it is at level or slightly above as each studio may be set up in a different manner so following Dolby/THX,DTS specs as best as possible should get you near the same set up it was recorded in.

Thanks Jay. I'll prep my back wall based on your input. (Can't wait for my QS4 to arrive). Thanks for the input everyone... interesting articles shared and I learned much from this discussion.

I'll just further say that I finally have my system installed as close to specs as possible and it sounds great, even Mojo commented today that it is quite possibly the best sounding system he has heard to date He even brought me a house warming gift, something I'll post a pic of later on this weekend as my wife is visiting out of town visiting and she has our camera.

Hello Everyone,

I just finished the installation of my speakers. Please look at "My lofty retreat" in the gallery section http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showgallery&Number=300981. There I have posted some pictures of my setup. Thanks everyone for the advice. The speaker placement of the QS8's worked great on the side walls. Even though I have them placed fairly high on the walls they are very forgiving. I get a wonderful enveloped sound now. Better than my old home/setup.

Glad to hear it all worked out.